


Fine Feathered Friend

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Series: Beau Week 2019 [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Crows Hold Grudges, Gen, They Also Remember Who Is Nice To Them, Young Beau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 05:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18565300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Beau slips away from her lessons and makes a friend in the woods.





	Fine Feathered Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Beau Week 2019, Day One. The prompts were childhood and youth/animals, so I combined them both.

Beau laughed silently as she slipped into the woods behind the house, the sound of her violin tutor calling for her already fading. He would get reprimanded by her parents for allowing her to escape, no doubt, not that she cared. She had _tried_ to convince him that it was too nice of a day to practice indoors, because it _was,_ and he had refused to listen to her. He was the one who had left the window open. It had practically been an invitation! He had turned his back on her for only a moment, but a moment was all Beau had needed to be out the window and running across the grass to the tempting lure of the woods.

Beau _loved_ the woods. There were trees to climb and animals to try and make friends with, and she didn’t have to sit still if she didn’t want to. Sitting still was _hard_ sometimes. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to learn things, she _liked_ reading if she was doing it herself, but she didn’t like being lectured at, or the way her tutors frowned at her when she fidgeted. There was no one to frown at her out here. There would be, later, when she went back to the house. Her mother would sigh at her scuffed shoes and the muddied hem of her dress, and her father would scowl and lecture, but that was later, far away and distant. _Now_ was full of trees and the calls of birds, of sun shining through leaves and onto her face.

There was a feather on the ground, blue and white and black, and Beau picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of her dress. Her dislike of her tutors did not extend to the woman who had taught her how to sew. Embroidery was a chore, but actual _sewing_ was useful, especially since it meant that Beau could fix what was obviously an oversight in women’s fashion. Why should only pants have pockets? Pockets were great! You could fill them with important things like breakfast rolls and feathers and interesting rocks!

There was another feather on the path, this one small and black all over, and Beau wasn’t sure what kind of bird it had come from. She slipped it into her pocket anyway and kept walking, feeling like a girl in one of those tales that her mother didn’t know that her nanny had told her. Her parents didn’t approve of fantastical things, preferring history and facts as opposed to made up stories, but Beau _loved_ hearing tales about girls fighting monsters in the woods, of princesses in towers and knights and dragons. She wanted to be a brave knight when she grew up. Or maybe a dragon. Being a dragon would be pretty--

Something rustled in the bushes ahead, followed by a thump and a distressed cawing squawk. Beau’s head snapped up as she ran toward the sound, toward the rumbling growl and the flapping of wings. Several feral cats roamed her parent’s property, and she had seen the aftermath of their kills, the sad piles of bloody feathers and the occasional broken body on the front steps. Maybe she was too late to save the poor bird, but she at least had to try.

The thought entered Beau’s mind that there were worse things than cats in the woods and she might have been running towards something she couldn’t handle, but luck was on her side, it seemed. It was indeed only a cat, a fluffy gray cat that had scratched her once when she had tried to pet it. The creature looked up from the black bird pinned under its paw and yowled at her.

“You leave that bird alone!” Beau yelled, her fist raised as if she were going to throw a rock. It was a bluff, she would never do such a thing (and in fact had bloodied the nose of one of the servant’s sons last week for throwing a rock at one of the stray cats), but the cat didn’t know that. It hissed, fur fluffing out in all directions before it bolted, leaving its prey behind.

The bird cawed as Beau approached it, hopping up and down, flapping its wings but not flying away. It was a crow, she realized, not fully grown but not a baby either. She looked up into the trees around her, but she didn’t see any nests nearby. She had read that fledgling crows sometimes left the nest before they could fly, living on the ground for a few days, with their parents still looking out for them.

“It’s okay,” Beau said, kneeling in the dirt, caring not a bit about staining her dress. “I’m not going to hurt you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a roll from breakfast, tearing it into chunks and tossing a piece near the young crow. It darted forward, snatching up the morsel and eating it quickly before looking at her and cawing again, wings fluttering.

“You liked that?” Beau tossed the crow another piece, delighted when the bird hopped closer to her to eat it. Now that it was closer, Beau could see that there were a few drops of blood shining on the crow’s chest, but it didn’t look serious, and the bird seemed alert and full of energy. She grinned, feeling proud, then laughed with surprise when the bird hopped right up to her and snatched the rest of the roll out of her hand. She reached out, wondering if the bird would let her pet it. Maybe it didn’t have any parents. Maybe it would want to go home with her and be her friend…

A crow landed in a bush nearby, cawing at her. It was larger than the crow on the ground, who hopped away from Beau and towards the adult bird. As Beau watched, the adult crow snatched an insect off the bush and flew down to the younger bird, stuffing the insect in its mouth when the younger bird cawed and fluttered its wings at it.

Beau left the rest of her roll on the ground and stood up, brushing the dirt off her knees, feeling sad, then feeling angry at being sad. “Okay then,” she said. “I should go anyway. Stay away from cats, all right?”

The cawing of crows followed her all the way back to the house.

***************

The next morning there was a feather on Beau’s windowsill. It looked black, but shone with other colors in the sunlight when she picked it up. Beau added it to her collection but didn’t think very much of it until the next day when there was another feather by her window. It made her think of one of her favorite stories, the one about the princess who had collected feathers until she had made a cloak of them and had flown away as a bird.

Some mornings there were shiny rocks instead of feathers, and one morning there was one of her mother’s earrings, which she had lost in the yard. Every day there was a new treasure, and every time Beau went outside there always seemed to be a crow flying overhead, or cawing from a nearby tree or a roof. She started leaving bits of food on her windowsill at night in exchange for the objects she found each morning. She did this every day for years and years, right up until the day her father called her downstairs, the day the monks took her away, bound and blindfolded, blood trickling from her nose and her split lip. Still, she smiled when she heard the flutter of wings and the cawing of a crow mixed with the swears and shouts of her captors, an old friend returning a favor the best they could.

**Author's Note:**

> I've read that crows remember people who are nice to them and sometimes follow them around and bring them things, and that just seemed so perfect for Beau somehow. Also crows remember people who are mean to them and seem to hold a grudge, and that seemed perfect for Beau too. 
> 
> I would have written about Professor Thaddeus, but I already did in The One The Owls Call Home. That bird is living his best life with one grumpy lighthouse keeper right now, at least in my head.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


End file.
